Will it never stop? There aren't enough hours in the day! At about the same time that UltimateBet launched there was a much lower-key launch on this side of the Atlantic, at GameAccount My Link. I thought I'd start a new thread to publicise this, although it follows on from something already mentioned. I'll freely admit that the above is a referral link and so I stand to profit from any signups. This seems only fair though, since I'm ruining my opportunity to play against largely novice opposition by advertising the existence of this place! Nevertheless, I've tried to make what follows an honest assessment of the good and bad points, rather than a commercial presentation. GameAccount continue to run their peculiar accumulation format, 1-on-1, playing the same shoe. More interestingly, they have now launched a 'proper' tournament format. More on that in a moment, but to answer Ken's question first - I opened an account here a while ago, mainly to take advantage of a signup offer, but have dabbled with the tournaments from time to time. I agree there is only so much you can do to try to overcome the high vig (actually higher than you quoted I think). You have to rely on the majority of players being fairly naive to have any chance of making it profitable. There are a couple of factors which I've taken into account when formulating my own particular stratgey - There is a penalty for every uncompleted round so, unlike most tournaments, it pays not to risk busting out before the end. Most players apparently always play five hands at once, rather than one at a time or any other possibility. (This was revealed to me when I queried GameAccount about exactly how the game works. In part I think this may be because it is actually quite hard to get through all the hands within the time limit, and timing out has the same penalty for uncompleted rounds as busting out does.) They've added a few other variants, none being very attractive in my oppinion. For some weeks, however, they have been running four freerolls per day. At the allotted times the first 64 players to sign up are entered into a knockout competition; the payout starts at the semi-final stage. Now to the main reason for this post. At the start of this month they added what they are calling 'Multiplayer Blackjack' (their old format is referred to as 'Single Player Tournament Blackjack'). Multiplayer currently only offers 1 on 1 play, although it looks like larger tables may appear in the future. There are S&Gos and, ironically, multi-table tournaments of the sort recently suggested for Global. Having played 142 tables (a useful feature is 'My Stats', which tells me I've so far won 79 and lost 63, a golden age which I fear will end now that you all know about this place. ), I thought I'd report my findings. There are a number of peculiarities about the game, some good, some bad, and some just ... peculiar. The good news is that I emailed their customer support with some comments and suggestions and had an encouraging response, suggesting things may well improve. The Fundamentals Rounds: 10 Starting BR: 1000 Min Bet: 100 (So you could bet the min 10 times and finish with nothing!) Max Bet: 500 Min Betting Increment: 1 (Very strange, takes some getting used to.) No Surrender No 'for less' (Not even to go 'all-in') You can hit split Aces I think you can only split once (but not sure about this) You can't DD on a BJ, you always get 3:2. DAS (unless you split tens and catch an ace, or vice versa; as with a BJ, your two-card 21 can't be improved on) A dealer BJ with 10 up is treated as 21, not a BJ! (This also applies to the single-player game) The User Interface ... is a bit fiddly (although quite pretty). It's web-based, using Flash. The game starts with a card dealt to each player to decide who gets the button. The low card gets the button for round one, which means they have the advantage in the final round, and so are in fact the 'winner', not the 'loser' of this step (contrary to what gets reported). There's a slider for setting your bet, but it's not easy to use. It's not immediately apparent, but you can click on the bet and a cursor appears allowing you to edit the figure. Also, your default 100 bet appears in the circle before you've actually made your bet, which can be confusing as it looks like you have 100 more than you really do. (You'll see what I mean if you try it.) MOST BIZARRE FEATURE - If you allow the 30s timer to expire, you don't get a min bet or a default action of stand. What you get is a message saying 'Game Over'. Talk about pressure! Luckily, I noticed this in a free practice game, not with any money at stake. I've had a few close shaves though. There's a chat lobby, and a small chat window in the game itself. I've not really investigated this beyond the occasional 'gg'. The Tournaments You can issue a challenge for someone to take you on in a S&Go (referred to as a 'cash game' in the software). The buyin can range from £0.50 to £100! (or free if you just want to practice). The vig for £5 and over is 5%, below that it is meant to be 7.5%, although I found it to be 10% for the £0.50 game. There's a ranking system! No idea how it's worked out, but you start with 1500 points and this goes up and down according to your results. You can progress from Rookie to Amateur to Pro status. Should you be a scaredy-cat, you can specify the maximum rank you wish to play against when issuing your challenges. Rise of the robots! - There are robot players you can take on, for free or for cash. It all seems above-board, and even the 'ProBot' (as opposed to 'RookieBot', 'BeginnerBot' and 'AmateurBot') doesn't play a particularly good game. They will, however, start declining your challenges if you win too much money off them, or if they have been losing too much to players in general. As well as the single-table S&Go (which they call cash games or match play), they have a four-player multi-table knockout (which this time they do call Sit and Go!). It's early days, but I've never actually seen one of these attract the four players needed for it to begin! I would expect new tournament formats to be added into the schedule in the coming weeks. They've been running four daily freerolls with a £50 prize pool (they were limited to 32 players, but I think this has just been increased). In addition a £1000 freeroll on Wednesdays has just appeared in the schedule. Unfortunately, the new Multiplayer freerolls are scheduled at the same times as the existing Singleplayer ones, which can make playing them both a bit of a juggling act. Bonuses etc. These things seem to change from day to day, so appologies if any of this is wrong, but I believe they are currently offering - 100% signup bonus (up to £100 I think). A Loyaly Points scheme that can return up to 2.5% of your weekly action. (But you'd have to play non-stop!; realistically it's more likely to be 1%.) A free book - 'Bringing down the house' or the venerable 'Beat the dealer' - for depositing £50. My GameAccount Link
I just won a tourney! OK, it was very small beer but still, it was the first thing I've won in ages. Entered the freeroll and got nowhere, but the schedule also had a £6-entry tourney with £50 added into the pot. (Actually it looks like they keep £1 in every £6 of entry fee, so if >50 people entered then the payout would be less than 100%) Only nineteen entered, so it was a good deal. I was losing the semi badly, with two hands to go. My opponent disconnected and had two minutes before disqualification. I felt guilty, but couldn't help crossing my fingers he wouldn't make it back in time. Bizarrely, he did re-appear in the chat but said - "You know what. I'm gonna give it to you. I have to pee." I swear I'm not making this up. He must really have needed to go!
When you have to go He/she could not have been a serious Blackjack player. I think that the majority of players on here would have pissed their pants before giving up on a final table. Andy
Progress Report I've had a reasonably successful first month playing at this place. The turnout for the £50 freerolls now tends to be around 70 to 100 players. Of these, only a handful seem to have given much thought to strategy, and that is mostly restricted to BS plus betting small early on. (And the S&Go robot players seem equally determined to follow basic strategy whatever the situation.) Unfortunately the freerolls only pay the top four, so you typically have to get through five or six rounds to win anything. I've suffered the pain of going out in the quarter-finals on more than one occasion. A more extreme version of this phenomenon is scheduled for Wednesday - a £1000, winner-takes-all freeroll. There are currently over 300 registered for this, so that is going to require eight or nine straight wins to hit the jackpot. Slightly more favourable are the £6-entry tournaments with £50 added to the prize pool (or £500 on Friday and Saturday). They pay out to the top eight, and also attract less players. On Sundays, there is also a £2-entry, £1000 guaranteed prize pool, that pays the top eight. Playing on the single-table S&Gos (aka'cash games') I had a lot of early success and probably fooled myself into underestimating the extent to which luck plays a role (both in general, and specifically in this format). Then I had one disastrous session in which I lost about half the profits that I had previously built up, against a single player in a couple of hours. I could see he was making errors, so it made no sense to stop just because he had been winning, but the defeats just kept on coming. I've recovered most of that back, but mainly from a couple of results in MTTs; my percentage of tables won (and my GameAccount ranking) is still short of the peak it reached. I'd be interested to hear anybody's thoughts on the best strategies for this format. I've evolved a fairly conservative approach, mainly because I want to give my opponent the chance to make a mistake before I weigh in with a large catch-up bet (which is likely to have to be a siginficant proportion of my BR). I also try to engineer an odd $1 early on, e.g., by betting $101 or $199 (and then wining or losing ). It can make a crucial difference later on. As well as the $100 minimum, people often make tentative early bets like $110 or $150, which seems totally pointless if the current difference in BRs is a multiple of the $100 min bet. In the early running, if we are level, I would follow that either with the min, or with $1 less than they bet. If you do decide to give it a go, I'd be grateful if you'd use the link in my sig. Regardless, I'd quite like to know what people think.
good job Well done, Colin! It is quite a full-range analysis of gameaccount.com. I have similar experience. Tournaments on this site are profitable to play, especially for skilled blackjack players. I hope, that number of tournaments and amount of prizemoney will be increasing as the number of new customers. The site itself has sometimes problems with bigger tournaments. It seems, that it has frozened for several minutes, but you have to be patient, tournament will continue.
Thanks Hrouda Nice to meet you here after chatting at GameAccount. I've got mixed feelings about this. I don't see how they can sustain the current prize structure for very long; they must be paying out rather more than they are taking in (at least from the scheduled tournaments, and the S&Gos don't look busy enough to make up the shortfall.) So more players may be needed to keep the current structure going, which would be a good thing; on the other hand it would also mean less of an overlay and less frequent in-the-money finishes. Yes. I've experienced this three or four times now. It can be an hour or more before the tournament unfreezes. On every occasion so far I was on hand to play, but a number of my opponents have been absent. I'd love to know if they got their entry fee back; customer support seems a bit lacking.
ProBot Hrouda, We were discussing whether or not we could trust the bot players to give an honest game, particularly since the playing strategies seemed so poor that they ought to lose quite heavily in the long run. I've noticed that the ProBot was unavailable a few times lately, and when it re-appeared its ranking appeared to have been reset. I suspect there have been some software upgrades; I've noticed some differences in the way it plays. I'm reasonably confident there is no cheating going on, though I'm still keeping careful records. As we discussed, the best way to cheat would be to pretend the bots are real players! However, if they are tweaking the bot software to improve its game, it may reach a point where it is not profitable to play it. - Something to watch out for.
